Sunday, January 13, 2019

How To Organise Your Professional & Personal Life.

*The products in this post have been sent to me as PR Samples with no obligation to write this post

The new year has just started and if you are anything like me, you loooove an occasion to re-organize your life. Be it sorting out your closet, cleaning out your makeup or like today: thinking about how to most effectively organize your professional and personal life. Whether or not you are working from home, all of us have to juggle our private life and work schedule. So today I would like to share with you my top tips on how to wing both of them at the same time.

Have two different planners

This is something I tried out over the past year and found it worked perfectly for me. I love having two different planners for my work and my personal life. My work planner should ideally be more detailed and in-depth but with my personal planner, I like to go lighter and also have some fun with the design. Of course, this is different for everyone, but my personal planner consists mostly of appointments and to do lists so I just don't need as much space as I do with my work planner. But if this idea is just too much for you and you are scared you might get confused with the two: another good way to distinguish these two areas is using different colors in your planner. Maybe a blue pen for your work and a black one for your private life?

Blackout timeslots

So, now you have set up your new planner(s).. and what now? It might be extremely tempting to go all in and schedule every single minute of your days to a certain task and get on that 'girl boss mentality'. But if you do that, trust me.. you will most likely feel like a failure in a couple of days time. Realistically tasks sometimes take longer to accomplish and other times something unexpected happens which takes away another hour from your day. Blacking out certain time slots in your day is essential. Maybe schedule one blank hour a day for your work things and one blank hour for your personal life. This way you ensure to meet your end goals for the day and in turn, you keep being motivated.

Prioritize & create boundaries

This is especially important when you work from home. But even when you have a more traditional job, creating boundaries is essential to achieve that work-life balance. Make sure you set yourself clear deadlines for the day when you have to be done with work and your personal life starts. Also, try not to do anything work related on weekends and if you have to, schedule another day during the week to have just for yourself. It is essential to have those downtimes for ourselves. Without them, we are less productive in our work life and less happy in our personal lives. So having those down times to yourself is a win-win for everyone. Your family and your employer.

Do not apologize, but explain

Everyone's life and everyone's jobs are very different. So obviously all of us make different decisions when it comes to work and life schedules. This is something everyone has to understand. So please do not feel pressured to apologize for getting work done when others are having their well-earned fun times. But explaining why this is so important right now and how you will get back that time in the future always helps.

Make those calls

In order to not neglect your personal life while climbing that career ladder, you sometimes have to force yourself to take the first step. Scheduling in calling your family and friends and setting dates to meet up is essential. Put it right up there on your to-do list. This is sometimes easier said than done, but it is so worth it. And if we are honest.. these calls only take a couple of minutes out of our morning. No excuses!

Eliminate distractions & procrastination

This is vital to work effectively and to ensure you get enough personal time. Yes, sometimes even I am tempted to check my personal emails or to quickly scroll through Instagram when I am supposed to get work done. But if you do that, you are simply sabotaging yourself. Because those few moments do not feel like proper 'me' time but they still take away from that proper 'me' time. If you just keep being focused you will finish your tasks much earlier and you will have so much more time to spend on yourself and really enjoy it. So disable those Buzzfeed push notifications and maybe put your phone on flight mode for a couple of hours.

It's always interesting learning about how others organize their personal and professional lives. I used iCalendar through my email account. I keep it color coordinated so that I know whether I am scheduled for something perosnal, academic, or work related. I'm not sure if I can keep up with two seperate planners. I definitely do have time I blocked out. Sometimes juggling isn't easy, but I find if I stay organized, I don't have an issue. Thanks for sharing, Lisa. x

Having two planners for personal and work life is such a great idea. Both of them have equal importance and their priorities are different. Putting them together just mixes up everything and it's hard to balance both. Thanks for this post. Loved it!

I'm obsessed with planning, so I go all out with my planner with colors and decor. I also have a wall calendar that I add my important projects to, so I have something I see hanging up all the time that reminds me of what I have to get done, so that helps! I also find it helpful to block off time on Sunday to plan my next week, so I know exactly what I'm doing when the week begins!

I have become the worlds biggest procrastinator in the past year and I honestly have no idea why because I always used to be so productive, so this post is so helpful! I definitely want to try use my time more proactively so I'm not wasting important moments where I could be working on things x

Oh I can relate to this! I started this year with a room renovation (which isn't finished yet) and I am taking the chance to change habits and get my life on track again. The end of 2018 was really rough. I started a bullet journal, which has worked as both therapy and task-improving. I feel compelled to do things and I feel so relaxed while creating the spreads!

Procrastination is something I decided to tackle this year as well. I realised it's better when I work intensively for shorter periods of time (like studying for 25 min, pausing for 5 mins, studying for 25 min and so on)

These are such good tips - especially the one about blocking out parts of your day for work or personal stuff. I'm lucky I work part time and it's easy to maintain both things, and being in the office helps me focus on the task at hand, but it can get tricky when I work from home when I have a lot of housework to do and the laundry pile just sits there when I'm in virtual meetings, haha!

I love the idea of planning out blackout times. I'm definitely going to adopt more of this. I love to read and the last few years I haven't made time for it, but blackout periods would make for ideal reading time whilst unwinding too. I also want to love the idea of 2 planners but I hardly ever use my one and only hahaha!

I loved these tips! Couldn't come at a better time either as I just started back at college this week. Staying focused is probably what I struggle with the most, but when I stay on top of it, I get so much done & feel so much more satisfied with my effort & the outcome x

My friends always think I'm over the top for having different planners / to-do list books but it's so necessary. I feel like having a daily planner (which for me has always been a plain A5 notebook that I write the date each day on top of the page) as well as a weekly planner. I then have seperate to-do list books. E.g one for blog post planning, one for goal planning, one for photography planning. I feel so much more organised when I don't try and jam everything in the one book.

This is such a wonderful post. I think keeping planners are so helpful and a great way to be professional! The photos are beautiful and you give some great tips!xx Jeniferhttps://www.theevolista.com/best-phuket-2-day-itinerary/

I've been struggling a lot finding balance lately. After working all day, I never have any motivation to socialize. I definitely need to start making those calls and keeping up with my relationships. Work/life balance really is such a challenge!http://expeditiontoeuphoria.com

These are really great tips! I often find myself prioritising my work over my personal life, then find that I have ZERO time for my blog. I'm trying to be a lot more organised this year and have actually started using my personal planner a lot more (so great idea with having two planners!). My phone calendar is filled with all my work meetings, but I organise my life admin stuff on my planner and I feel like it helps me plan things out better.

This is such a great post, and has inspired me to get my organising boots on for sure!

In regards to the planners, I have got myself one this year when I haven't got one before. Do you feel like you need to carry it around everywhere or do you leave it at home? I'm never really sure what to do. xx